Friday, December 17, 2004

Here's an excerpt from U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham's prepared remarks at Tsinghua University in Beijing:

As you know, all of the elementary steps of energy conversion take place on the nanoscale.

Thus, development of new nanoscale materials, as well as the methods to characterize, manipulate, and assemble them, open up incredible possibilities for developing new and revolutionary energy technologies.

These could include splitting water with sunlight for hydrogen production… developing solid-state lighting at 50 percent of the present power consumption… building super-strong, light-weight materials to improve the efficiency of cars and airplanes… and creating low-cost fuel cells, batteries, thermoelectrics, and ultra-capacitors built from nanostructured materials.

Nanotechnology also holds great promise for producing better solar energy modules with greater power and lower cost. More here